Today with the family the first of the Lake District walks got underway . Going over to Ullswater via the A66 cross Pennine route with the Carboniferous Pennines on the right all rolling and anticline ( look it up its a good one ) with a fluffy duvet cover of grey white clouds following the gradients and on the right the sun blazing away over the Howgills , Mallerstang and Wild Boar Fells were all putting us in the right frame of mind for a good foot slogging . Chicago 1, the album not the show thank God, was rocking out of the stereo and it was Jazz Rock all the way to Glenridding and because we were early virtually nobody there ! Well the lads were going the high way up to Hellvelyn via Striding edge which is a bit of a joke because that's the last place you can stride unless you want to break your leg , and tred around Red Tarn and then a deviation from what I suggested to "lengthen the walk " as Miles said. Good lad . The intrepid Fo and Paul were going the low way around the Ullswater Lake to a Delta near Hopetown named because if you get there there's no hope of getting back and when we watchfully went along the path with a might be a Whinchat or Stone Chat we actually saw two bird species that we were confident we could identify when we got back because they were rare but blindingly obvious namely a Common Crossbill all orange and err Crossbilled , thats what millions of years of eating nuts does for you but best of all after scanning an oak tree with more forensic intent than CSI we saw a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and joy of joys it flew straight at and over us and its mate or brother or sister joined it and they winged over to a prominent Larch and just perched there just posing for us to look at them . Wonderful and they pranced around a load of rocks as well putting on a good show . Well all of this within 250 metres and on the rest of the 8 mile walk we saw little but got quite into some interesting droppings which were jet black like blackberry jam but they had undigested red berries in the stuff and for the life of us we could find no Flora with red berries . We think it was the droppings of a Pine Marten because we've seen similar droppings in Grisedale forest but the jury is still out . After getting close to Hope Town but with no hope of getting there and getting back to the boys in time we ripped back just to make sure we were on time and galloping through the rocky woods was great , so great that we realized we had got well ahead of time so we crashed out near where we saw the woodpeckers and amongst about 50 Cubs doing hiking and a fine bunch of young hiking ladies went by all courtesy, fine legs and curves and I wish my lads had been there to see that the Hiking Lady species is not dieing and is there just waiting to be ummm hiked with . They're coming with us next time although they ran into a large group of young hiking ladies trudging down a steep bit of Hellvelyn and they looked like they'd gone a long way . A great day and several birds we saw like the Little Grebe or was it a Wigeon we are busy trying to nail down . We've got to take notebooks to write down what we see because its easy to forget . A great day out !